There's not a business across the Border and North East that hasn't felt the pinch in recent times. Soaring energy costs were at least a contributing factor to the closure of the Norske Skog paper mill at Ettamogah and were behind production shutdowns at one of Wodonga's biggest manufacturers in Mars Petcare earlier this year.

When you combine that, and the heightened focus on climate change in the current environment, it is more than a little curious that the proposed development of solar farms in our region would cause such angst.

Farmers making a case for the Jindera solar farm - one of four in Greater Hume, along with Glenellen, Culcairn and Walla - have failed to win over councillors, who voted to oppose the project. Among the reasons for the decision was that the Jindera site sits on prime agricultural land which, in times of drought it was argued, had still been able to "grow crops and fatten animals".

On the flip side of that argument, the 521 hectare site at Jindera represents just 0.09 per cent of the 5746 square kilometre Greater Hume Shire and that even if it was developed, there'd still be an abundance of prime land to farm.

In yesterday's Border Mail, Greater Hume councillor Matt Hicks, who has strong links to the Culcairn proposal, described anyone against the developments as "jealous", saying "there isn't any negatives to these proposals, there are only positives".

Are the solar farms going to employ hundreds of people for the next 30 years? No, but they will employ people as they're constructed and given the recent news at Norske Skog, that's a good thing.

Howlong residents kicked up a stink two years ago and were able to halt a compost plant being built on the edge of the town but this situation doesn't have the same smell about it for the NSW Planning Department.

It's a given that you'll never please all of the people all of the time but, on face value, the case for solar development seems stronger than the case against.